Snorre Kirk

Biography
Press

After skyrocketing onto the European Jazz Scene as a sideman with some of the finest names on the Scandinavian jazz scene today, as well as working with prominent international names such as Diane Schuur, Eric Reed and Stephen Riley, recent years have seen inter-scandinavian drummer Snorre Kirk come into his own as a full-fledged artist and composer in his own right.

On Blues Modernism, the hugely successful 2012 debut outing from Snorre Kirk, that was subsequently awarded with the prestigious JazzSpecial Award in Denmark for "Album of the Year", as well as receiving two nominations in the Danish Music Awards, the drummer got an opportunity to showcase his remarkable qualities as a composer and as a bandleader as well. Featuring a stellar cast of contemporary Scandinavian jazz greats, this mellow and soulful album proved to be the downright antithesis to the often dreaded drummer-as-bandleader format, and showed Snorre Kirk to be not only an accomplished drummer, but a highly original composer and artist as well, and was received well by the critics, with recurrent references being made to both Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus. From sultry ballads to down home grooves, to church music and beyond, and all heavily drenched in the comforting sound and familiar warmth of the blues, this is indeed a modern album for modern times.

Spring 2015 saw the long-awaited release of Snorre Kirk’s sophomore album, the aptly entitled Europa, certain to further cement his position as one of Europe’s fastest rising jazz stars.

“In the early developing stages of most composers or artists”, Snorre Kirk states, “a natural need will arise to assess artistic intent, rather than focusing solely on the created content itself. Ever present in any form of art, is the danger of reiterating the stories and experiences already belonging to somebody else, and with jazz in particular, you can easily confuse the language as such, with the actual stories themselves. Say for example, if you are learning a new language, your main goal is most likely to attain enough proficiency to able to express yourself freely and personally within that language, rather than reciting textbook material, already written by somebody else. The same should go for jazz. From a historical perspective, the language of jazz is decidedly American, but the stories and experiences that make up this album, are most certainly European, as well as highly personal.”